There's wet, pain, and red Then River
by Hella530
Summary: A one shot someone else from the academy who got out


She's home, on their Core planet, living modest, with their parents, dead five years now, her pin straight red hair pulled away from her face as she sits in the rain, the smell of wet wood and dirt reminding her of camping trips when she was little, when she hears the strange sound of someone yelling in her head before she realizes this was all a dream, and that was her sister, and she had to wake up.

**_please no, Dinah wake up please! they never, no! fear fear fear almost out, oh god please Dinah!_** She rubbed her eyes and sat up in the bed on the Rim world planet of the sweet old couple that let two sisters stay for a spell. She knows immediately the couple is dead and Reavers are here. The drug induced sleep leaves the world bright around the edges as she blinks at her sister, her frizzy red hair looking like a halo of blood around her pale face, shooting out the window and glancing frantically between the barricaded door and the bed Dinah was in. Her delicate features covered in dirt. Now that sleep had lifted she could hear her sister's skittering thoughts clearer.

**_oh god please don't let them get us! not like this not like this, didn't manage to get her out of that hell for it to end like this. oh god she's awake_!** "Dinah!" Her sister cries out. She just tilts her head at her and licks her lips.

"I know, the red men are here for our flesh and our screams, we can not let them make us into cloaks. Don't worry, I will cut them down. You have laid down many, and besides," She tries to remember Her name, the one who got out right when she did, her escape providing the distraction for hers a few days later, she wasn't prized, she hid her progress from them so when she was taken, with an explosion and a dead body in her place it was not questioned or even really looked into too closely. Not like with Her, what was her name...?** _something with water, Ocean, Stream, Pond? oh forget it_** "the Water Child is coming with the bug named Peace from the stars." She said with a smile. She could hear Her in her thoughts, they had been friends when they had been in rooms next to each other, thinking at each other through the wall. They had passed by Her ship a few days ago and when she had felt the familiar mind she had reached out and clung, only able to impart a few words. **_I am here, I am here_** She knew it had been enough, she knew that they would all be safer together, her and her mei-mei and the Water Child and her ghuh-ghuh. She just knew it. Her sister was staring at her blankly, not understanding. Dinah sighed, she knew her sister did not understand her. But it was hard to talk normal, things just spewed out of her mouth like when she got real sick one time. And her already short attention span did not help matters.

"What?" Her sister asked before leaning out the window and firing a few shots before ducking back in and fixing her sister with her questioning gaze.

"I'm going to kill the rest of them, I was trained for it, stay low, don't get shot." She said, forcing herself to speak plain. She picks up a machete and tucks it into the belt on her pants and grabs a claw hammer before walking over to her sister and bending forward to kiss her on the forehead before smiling at her. **_just like she used to_** Her sister thought to herself quiet and reverent as she stared up at her. "Listen to your jei-jei now." She said before flinging herself out the window, landing in the big circle of Reavers as she swung her hammer down and began taking them out cleanly and efficiently, not nearly as graceful a fighter as Her, but damn good in her own right.

Twenty minutes later after losing her hammer and wetting her blade with plenty of Reaver blood, her sister taking down many with her gun too, _**always the best sniper, always, so proud**_ she hears it. She's slicing the blade through the Reaver's spine and then looks around to see no more as the whirring space craft lands near the house.

"Jei-Jei!" She hears her sisters voice, panicked, as she sees the ship too. If she strains her ears she would hear her Hannah clearing the door. But she knows not to panic, She is here, and she brings safety-family-peace with her. She sighs and spies the name of the ship. **_Serenity_** She just shrugs, well she was close. The hatch opens and a large man with an equally large gun comes down, swinging it around before landing on her, covered in wet, red, sticky blood.

"Hey!" He yells up the ramp. "I think I found Moon brains crazy friend!" A well dressed man starts down the ramp, slowly, nervously, and Dinah just knows that's Her brother. Her Simon, Her savior. She wants to smile at him, but since the Academy she knew safety in two things, Her (arriving back in her cell-like room to hear Her through the wall questioning her health) and her mei-mei, who would go through hell and back to find her, she was Hannah's cornerstone, her grounding rock. Albeit a very cracked grounding rock now, but grounding nonetheless.

"Um hello?" Simon says to her. She stiffens slightly.

"I know who you are. You are the digger." She replies, he blinks in confusion.

"Excuse me?"

"You dug into the ground, to steal the water from the cruel moles, carried her to the sky where she floats free."

"Um-"

"What you didn't know was you made a well for the cracked grounding rock to rise from. They didn't want it anyways so they didn't search for it." Simon looks really confused now. "It's hard to say the right words, redirected my wiring." She says with a shrug, then She's there. "Water Child." She says. iit's you/i She thinks.

"Cat." She replies. Dinah tilts her head.**_ from the book with the rabbit, remember? you told me_** Dinah's eyebrows rise in comprehension.

"Down the rabbit hole?" **_that book?_**

"With the lost girl." **_yes that one_** Oh the familiarity of this was so strong Dinah could weep, they had thought this a neat trick till their brains darkened with secrets and pain and 'we meant it for the best, to make people safer', and secrets and thoughts that weren't welcome slipping through their brains.

"Dinah." She corrects, tilting her head briefly to the left, it was so odd they remembered each other's favorite fruit, favorite story, deepest secret, yet always forgot the others name. She smiled.

"River." She replied, correcting. Dinah smiled happy and tired.

"I knew there was water involved." She said, her shoulders slumping with exhaustion, her stamina could never reach Hers, never.

**_your mind's not nearly as cracked as mine though._** River commented in her head. Dinah could sob with joy if she had no fear of looking weak, to not have to say all those little things she knew she should say but couldn't was almost joyous for her.

"Dinah!" She heard her sister scream for her as she got out of the house and sprinted to her. Dinah grinned at her.

"Blood's not mine, her name is River." She said, knowing her sister was wondering about both things. She caught up to her and panted.

"Water Child?" Her sister said, not really a question. "You sure get things mixed up in that big brain of yours." Hannah teased. Dinah stuck her tongue out at her. She knew things would be better now. She knew the captain would let her and her sister join the ship. She knew Jayne would come to consider her little sister as his own sister, bonding over guns and the innate ability to shoot really well. Kaylee would at first view her sister as a threat in her relationship with Simon before she walks in on Simon arguing with Hannah in much the same way that he argues with River, except she's not as smart as him and uses stubbornness and childishness to try to win the fight. Kaylee realizes neither views the other as anything other then a surrogate sibling, although both are too annoyed with the other and too fearful to admit that they do. The other relationships are too fuzzy to make out but she's happy with what she does know, and it's rare for that to happen. They told her she was very precognitive, she just knew it as knowing things. She knows things will be hard on the ship. She'll miss the smell of wet wood, and the feel of dirt, she will never love space as much as River, her friend, her guiding star, her very best friend, does, but she'll love it enough, and she'll be free. And that's all she wants.


End file.
